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Dec
Reporters Without Borders awarded its Foundation de France prize Wednesday to Kareem Amer, according to FreeKareem.
Kareem, a 23-year old Egyptian former university student was sentenced a year ago to four years in prison for “offending Islam” and President Mubarak. He has been beaten and tortured in prison. FreeKareem is collecting donations to keep him in decent food and clothing.
- Published by Curt Hopkins in: Reports
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2 Responses to “Imprisoned Egyptian Blogger Awarded French Prize”
…and last time I checked, a few weeks ago, no money has reached his lawyers in Egypt.
Amr,
Please check again. Just a few days ago we updated the website explaining the donation procedure.
Few facts.
1) Kareem’s lawyers do not communicate with the Free Kareem campaign. Obviously, we want to, but they are not responsive. Dalia Ziada (yes, that little Egyptian activist whom lots of people associate with the CIA) was our only contact within HRINFO and since she has left, there has been 0 contact with their team. We have been relying on Kareem’s friends for any “insider” information since then.
2) What does the donation button read. Collect finances for his lawyers? No, it says collecting donations for Kareem Amer. We are not and should not feel required to send it to Kareem’s lawyers when we have trusted friends who visit Kareem frequently and who understand this procedure quite well, having dealt with it before.
We are sending this in the hands of Shahinaz Abdel Salam. Anything about the donations that you don’t understand, simply contact either us or Shahinaz whom we are sending the money. She has proof of the receipts that show how and when the money is reaching Kareem. We scanned these for the website, she has a physical copy which she would be happy to share with anyone who doubts our actions.
3) I find it seriously alarming that the “word” on the street is that the money is not reaching Kareem (when we have explained time and again why we have taken long to figure out the logistics, as inexperienced as we are in this field) when in fact not a single blogger has contacted us about it, and instead chose to blog the news without double checking the facts with the actual campaigners. Only 2 Egyptian journalists bothered to contact us directly, both of whom have apologized for falling for these baseless rumors in the first place.
Just to recap again on what I noted above. We are not sending the money to his lawyers especially if they are not responsive to us. We are sending it to Kareem in the hands of mutual friends. Either way, we have proof of our actions and to anyone with a problem, there is a contact button on the Free Kareem website. Lots of people use it to find out these kinds of information, and for the most part they are satisfied with the answers.
If you want proof, you got it, just make some effort to contact us before making such serious claims against a campaign that continues to work hard to make the fight for Kareem as strong, effective and as international as possible. Frankly these rumors are merely a distraction to deal with and we often don’t bother with them, Shahinaz herself does a really good job of refuting such claims in her own blogs. Anything else, people are more than welcome to criticize, but we will not sit here and watch people make such serious implications without contacting us for any sort of backup. I understand that certain people don’t trust us, not that any of us in the campaign actually care as it plays a minimal role in generating worldwide interest, and these people are welcome to criticize our efforts. Criticism is one thing and making an unethical claim like this is another. We take the latter quite seriously.
In conclusion, we have posted proof and will continue to do so on a monthly basis. The money is reaching Kareem, we are doing our best in making sure of it. Anyone with doubts is more than welcome to contact us and rest assured we’ll reply with the handy proof.
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